NFL Honors: Ken Walker gets most first-place votes, still doesn’t win Offensive Rookie of the Year

The Seattle Seahawks had candidates for Offensive and Defensive Rookie of the Year at the NFL Honors ceremony on Thursday, but neither of them won.

As expected, cornerback Tariq Woolen lost out to New York Jets cornerback Sauce Gardner for DROTY. Woolen not only didn’t win the award but he actually finished 3rd behind Detroit Lions pass rusher Aidan Hutchinson. It was still a fantastic year for Woolen, whom unlike those other two was a Day 3 draft pick at a position he only just started playing towards the end of his collegiate career.

The voting was not close.

Offensive Rookie of the Year was more of a question mark, and Seahawks running back Kenneth Walker III just narrowly lost out because of the new voting system. The Jets swept the Rookie of the Year awards thanks to wide receiver Garrett Wilson, who caught 83 passes for 1,103 yards and 4 touchdowns from a trio of very bad quarterbacks.

What’s interesting is that the old voting system, which had all 50 Associated Press voters cast their ballots for one winner, would’ve been golden for Walker. He had more first-place votes (19) than Wilson (18). However, the new system is a 5-3-1 points allocation for 1st-2nd-3rd, and because Wilson had more 2nd and 3rd place votes than Walker he got the W.

Based on the quick math, 13 voters didn’t view Walker as a top-3 OROY candidate, which is incredible. I’m not incensed that Walker didn’t win over Wilson but roughly 25% of the voters not even thinking K9 wasn’t in contention for the award is crazy.

Are you a fan of ranked choice voting? Because if so, the newly implemented system resulted in Wilson getting the nod despite having one fewer first-place vote.